Stilling the ego

Despite being conscious of my desire to fall on an off-day, despite treading lightly through the vagrancies and maybes and itches, within a few hours there I was falling. Again. Though this time I was somehow a spectatator, chiming with what he said about the concept of allocentricism, the ability to empathise not just with others, but with your Self. I got in the shower and said no, even though it knocked. I put on moisturiser and felt dramatically sorry for myself, checking I was just this side of beautiful though watery eyes. I felt pressured and heavy to perform, an old problem with which I am both held up and bored.

I ate some of last night's stewed red cabbage, with chicken bits dipped into mayonnaise, and memories of warm holidays nineteen ninety eight. A colour came from the food, a reality. Still the ego and start a conscious conversation with the Sage, it said. I liked that bit. Why be so hard on yourself? Why must creativeness be put under historical pressure. Am I not Not Doing This Anymore? Despite the falling, aided by the watching, it shortened, with effort, to a little under four hours. I went to spy on the coal tits and their nest outside my window, learned their call, and felt a conversation begin.

I get overwhelmed. All the balancing that I do and am, when weak, becomes difficult to sustain. History and present and pleasure and reward and work and proper principles, all mixed up in bad quantities on a scale with a duff CR3032 battery. RESET. It won't reset. I'll just guess. I'll read the Review, I'll look at Vogue, I'll get lost looking up non-urgent shit on the internet. Hours will pass plus two breakfasts and no speech and I've inputted thoughts but not done any action. I'm in bed at half twelve because no-one needs me today. Today? And whence starts the next problem...

I liked what she said about not 'being' your feelings. Like on tired days at Monmouth I am almost living the memory of 2009. Like cleaning the bins on my first day back, the desire to fall tapped on my shoulder and I tried to shrug it off but instead it fell rattling into the steel receptacle, in turn making more non-intelligent work. I had spent weeks cultivating the proper principle, awakening the right brain, and here I was being paid to pretend I am all left. Every way has a right but only in the realm of the logical left. Remember that thing I said about we're only brains, she told me, well that really disturbed me. It did me too.

I'm picturing pine cone pineal glands. I'm picturing duvet-cover-dharma-corners. Snap. Come on, you know where you should be. But when I'm even logicalising this act of 'imagination', am I still pretty far away from it? I watched the kids relish in ridiculous plots and wished I could. I watched the puppeteer in anthropomorphic glee and countered my jealously with inspiration. I sifted through the aphorism posters with a too-close jarring. I'm not feeling creative at the moment, I told her. And at least I know this, and am boiling down the episodic spinning. All that's left is to start that conscious conversation.

Proper principles

My stomach still flipped. It was totally annoying actually, perpetrating this sea of calm that I seem to be floating on without any effort. My insides turned inside, like the sneeze-diaphragm-flip. Butterflies. It's almost like a sneeze that didn't happen and then turns into fizz and you get that incredible frustration with the way things should be. You get a grump on as you missed a sneeze just because you were serving a customer. I almost forgot about the Customer today, almost rising to his rile with some retort that would've been so so dangerous. It's funny how I'm paid to annul my humanness, my instincts for what is good and true.

He didn't want to share the eponymous table eight even though there was only four of them on there. He shifted uneasy, pretending to budge but not actually moving at all. Diffuse the situation I thought, but you're a cunt, I also thought, and you're fucking rude, and I'm a person here actually you fucking bastard, you think you have any right over me just because you're having a 'meeting' with a foolscap pad and I'm wearing an apron. But I didn't say any of these things I just moved away and went back to filters because I was as close to thinking as saying these things, a kind of triad of constraint where I could too easily have taken the other plane.

It fizzed down into me and bedded down. I had to internalise the problem because I was getting paid to ssh my humanness. Spend all this time adhering to proper principle, and then have to sit on it because the time so isn't right. My stomach flipped when he came in. I watched him meander along the counter, wishes to all, then he came to the front and before I realised I'd been ignored. My crest had well and truly fallen. Most disappointing. I found myself clawing onto the proper principles, unable to decode which one was the answer to this here question. Compassion remedies Judgment; Attachment requires Generosity. This time is was Resistance. I Let Go. It was two hours later, but as soon as I let go, told her, she's going to help me, I felt fueled for the rest of the day.

Problems are like knots. Sometimes several layers are in play, like a knot out of cotton, knotted over with embroidery thread, bound in tapestry yarn. Each layer has it's own problem. Some things we can only act on the problem in hand, to reveal the further issues underneath. He's not a straight case. I don't interpret that rudeness direct. Told as a story, it doesn't bode well, but we are more complicated than that. I cried in the shower last Monday. My legs were aching like five years ago and it hurt as a memory and as a reality. From then on I got better. Sometimes you have to work backwards, because it's still working.

Threes

I always think of you when I think of surface tension, I told her. She was pleased about this. So was I. I just iced the most beautiful pistachio cake, it's unrefined gloss just brimming, the example of a perfect sugar lemon ratio, button nuts like some square snowman, popped on a lid on top of the vegetarian flavour pie I made earlier. Next to the parsnip soup from a 25p bag of 'nips and an apple. Same colour as my blender. I'm a smug bastard right now.

I've been quite frustrated for a couple of days. My words aren't in place, and I miss them, but you can't call, they don't run. I can only busy myself with comforting domesticity, 50s and 60s radio shows buffered with various types of chopping and mixing and floor-based exercise. Oh, what it is, is that I didn't have any weekend. So I seem to have given myself one. At the same time as having a right stress about not doing anything. In truth I have been held up by the impending 7 days on/1day off/2 days on/xmas day thing.

The lack of production, if one suddenly becomes quite expectant of one's creative ability, can be a bit of a shocker. I even dreamt he brought out one of those Faber poetry pamphlets, overtook me again before I could even lay claim to it as an idea. I was weirdly calm when he came into the shop, a nod as my attention magnetised from the dishes corner, though he still made it into my dreams. How strange the other one would turn up on the same day, how annoying I would have to stare into those pale blue depths in the last three minutes of my shift wearing my most disgusting jumper. It swathed me in melancholy for at least two days. No-one likes a pointer towards non-success.

It seems things do come in threes. The next day, I had gladly forgotten he'd be there, scolded shit as I saw him roaming, chewing in leather. He embraced me awkwardly, after I'd ignored him on purpose, lolling on plastic chairs like some wanton dog. We had nothing to say to each other. Later I sat round the happy gift dinner table, watched their long-haired pictures, arms around girls, as for now they were the same person. Watched girls flick their hair and show their teeth appreciatively, one of those times I'm holding back some scornful face of pure cynicism. What was I thinking.

I found myself browsing profiles last night. I felt completely sick at myself. Like seeing these three in two days had alerted me to the fact that I seem to have abdicated from the game. I canceled a potential last Thursday so I could go ballroom dancing at the Wapping Project. For example. He'd rode past me on the street, our quickfire revealed I couldn't care for instant gratification. I contemplated this. I decided however good one night, one month, could be, is it worth feeling this rubbish three months later. Of course I'd rather go dancing. But I can't lie, it would be pretty nice to share this culinary serendipity.

Gemütlichkeit

Perhaps it would seem awfully indulgent and somewhat wasteful to sit in bed all of Saturday. I have been here since the sun came up over there, and will stay until it completes its low winter arc over there. Ten hours sleep wasn't enough, so I have stayed here through three rounds of snacks and hot drinks, and I still am not bored. I decided as soon as I am bored (read dissatisfied, edgy), this must mean my normal level of consciousness is restored, and I am no longer ill. As it is, I am trying to shift the glitch so I can go dancing tonight.

Always so much pressure to perform on a spare Saturday. When 3 miles away in the metropolis, the minions are at work under heavy crowds and shouts, mounting our performance rites, twists turns, sorrys, yes it's too early to buy it for Christmas, there's nine people waiting do you want to wait, when the minions are at work and one is not, well, there is usually a feeling of utter redundancy. Not today. I learnt of the Ministry of Stories at the same time as reading it, I watched The Beauty of Diagrams, I pictured cinnamon pear cake, thought saving is a waste and spent time researching boat living. I scribbled and thought and basked, because overachieving is overrated. Like he said yesterday, 'not pursing a career (anything) at the moment' didn't used to be a bad thing.

I know I have lost the art of contentment. It takes foreignness to jolt this into me. With such a bombardment of options and choice, it becomes difficult to know what one truly wants. London is heavy, I saw it when I left the station on Thursday, when I clock-watched yesterday to Big Ben over the river in the afternoon's arc. The denseness becomes a metaphor for the affects on a person. I love leaving, because I love the comparison on return. London is not a pretty city, at least not to my pocket. I am not allowed historical steeping, a visual warmth, you would never say the east is good-looking. There is something to be said about the visual not being something that needs blocking out. Whilst I live in the best British city for me right now, it's not necessarily the best city.

I didn't intend to miss the second day of the Tino Seghal workshop. I wasn't sad to miss it, only to deprive another of the chance. Had I felt itchy last night I would've given up my place there and then, but the ills came on quite sudden. Almost a year to the day, bizarrely. It has got very cold. Hibernating shouldn't be a guilty thing. That word came up, the Danish one, this time in Dutch. From the German Gemütlichkeit, comes the idea of 'cosiness' not just as an adjective, but as a verb. Being. Belonging, social warmth, and the key one, quality time. I am all about the Gemütlichkeit from now on. I wrote a list in Le Pain Quotidien at St Pancras, in the last half hour of my holiday. I like to think a trip incites learned moments, maybe 'being busy' is not at the top of that list.

Couleurs

I was just hanging out my washing, and I re-realised it is actually one of the most pleasing visual things I do. After the unpleasant unfurling of twisted legs and arms, I take the mentionables outside, place the unmentionables on a chair for inside inside. I hook the heavy pile over my forearm like some borne offspring, and present them to the line. Our line is loose, so the first piece always billows too much, so I never choose a sacred first item. My display unfolds colour truths, decisions I don't even make, my week laid out in close-toned primaries: Red, yellow, blue. Mmmmm.

The fact that these shades are so me, so honest, must mean I constantly have to block out unpleasing shades. Think of all that warm blue, all that paled yellow, reds too hollow to clock. I'm doing my day on constant hue watch, step back, step back, with your wrong choices! My versions are ridiculously particular. I love that. I might even go and look at the line now, just to check, yes I do still like things. So long as they come in a red with a tomato undertone, a yellow that knows mustard, a blue of petrol slick or fly body.

I just bought some new glasses. It's a weird experience. Like buying a haircut but one which won't grow out. It's been difficult this time. Now that glasses are so fucking trendy, we don't even have the preserve of our own quirk. Obviously untrue out of London, take those rad frames out in the provinces, and well, you may as well have punk spikes or two noses. I forget this. Anyway London, London, everything is just a nod towards the ever-fading American Apparel. Most things I put on my face said Californian whore or Shoreditch twinkle. This is unfair, we can't even make our foible our own anymore? The fuckers.

Anyway I shot round it by not going to Cutler & Gross, or vintage, but going to local optician with good value handmade frames that felt right and looked minorly wrong. I like a problem. They're not oversized, they're not 'sexy', they're not London 2010, they're not lets-see-if-those-lenses-are-real-I-can-tell-they're-not-because-the-angle-of-your-face-is-the-same-when-I-look-through-them-how-dare-you. These ones are David Hockney. They are black with a keyhole bridge and you can see my eyebrows. They make me look like my mum, which basically means they make me look like me. Like I said, I like problem.

I have spent a while Googling 'girls in glasses'. I was thinking more Miss Moneypenny than Jenny Eclair. Annie Hall..? Er, I can't even name 5? The Wikipedia entry is full of cool men in history, but the only women mentioned are Anastacia, Dame Edna Everage (who is a man) and Deidre Barlow (who isn't even real). The girl in the shop said "you either go geeky or sexy", which I found fun, as surely you can be a sexy geek (but clearly not a geeky sex). Anyway I went for classic black rather than tortoiseshell, which I will own one day once the trend has blown over, and I can afford real ones. I just hope the black successfully dilutes those beloved primaries. And I never hear the words geek chic.

A kind of magic

Hello, he answered furtively. Hi, this is Zoe, you just tried to call me, I said, pretending I hadn't just Googled his 0208. I'M LOCKED IN MY HOUSE! he exclaimed. Brilliant. Absolutely terribly brilliant. A teacher of magic, locked in his own frigging house, told with inherent tongue-in-inherent-cheek. I've had this feeling twice in two days, this edginess where I'm all misaligned, I'm overslept for Powerpoint, I'm too artired (v.knackered feeling from over-exposure to art, crowds, bad air conditioning) for The Magical Consciousness. I'm operating under a pull which doesn't feel right, but I have to go to computer class, I have to go to mysticism, because not only have I paid, but surely my heaviness is just laziness or a temporary inability to see the optimism in things? 'It'll be alright when I get there'?

Yesterday, I scuttled out of bed and onto bike in 15 mins, all awkward and wrong, and made it into B4 for the 10am start. I was promptly told I had to leave the room due to 'funding regulations', having missed last week's class due to a second-hand cold. But I thought it'd waste less money if I came, I protested, quite half-arsed and clearly doing a really bad job of acting like I gave a shit about Microsoft Office. I swanned out into London (capital L thankyou) all pleased with myself, realigned and glad to be alive. Today, I got home from Tate Modern mania, verbally moaning about not wanting for any magic tonight, only to receive a call from the man himself telling me he was tentatively awaiting a locksmith. Ah I do feel realigned. So much so I had energy enough to dance round an empty kitchen to James Brown's Gettin' Down To It and a million versions of Stormy Weather, drinking a terrible indulgence that is Colebrooke Row rhubarb gin and apple juice. Don't tell anyone.

Ok, I admit it's now tomorrow. My wild freedom led me to sorting out speaker systems and re-sorting papers upstairs till 2am. Rather wild that. I thought again of heading out to a Cocktail Week bar, alone but not lonely, but decided against the success of the Boundary Rooftop. All of a sudden, I am super, make that hyper-conscious of my Londonitus. And not just due to my accounts. I know I've been ploughing through with extra-curricular activities for some time, but people have started to notice. Three times in the past four days. I look forward to hearing about your escapades, he said. You've always got so many options of things to do, she commented. London's perfect for you, he said, aren't you a journalist? I felt uneasy. Ugh, ugh, still now, ugh, still, again now. I am consuming, yes, I'm eating London thanks, tasty, but (I know/do I)* I need to process this information? Is re-hashing my experience denouncing it dirtily as fodder, a displacement activity for want of something truly creative? Does the experiential, unrendered version stay sweet, or just smack wasted purity into my face?

I've been bored for seven years, I said. I keep telling them but I'm telling myself. Let me indulge a while. I do worry I will skate the surface of things, become addicted to the art of cultural intake, but really, I know I'm just Enjoying Myself. I feel I do have to be careful that I continue to appease these treats, and not be in turn consumed by them. Canceled computers led me to tea at Bea's of Bloomsbury, pondering life as a baker, whilst reading The Gentlewoman, pondering life as both a journalist and 'as a Julia Davies'. In Selfidges bar, Tanqueray Man told cocktail histories that excited the gin joint landlady in me, Nars sparked my makeup artiste, and the basement graduate show twanged my art string. Too Many Things. Even that as a list feels heavy. Imagine it in my head on a daily basis. And I swear I'm being honest.

Skate on the lightness, but be wary of the heaviness. Let it up and in, keep it down. Have plans, have them broken, book tickets, turn up on standby, make dates, selfishly cancel, don't leave the house and get frustrated, chat to strangers if they'll let you, run into people, pretend to be someone, pretend to be you. In short, trust in the future of things a little. And if I am allowed to cite my own aphorism, Let problems evolve...

* I couldn't pick one, oh my democracy

Chemin

Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life? Cripes I do not know! I wish wish wish I knew! I always think of this quotation, I looked in the mirror at the 30s German party, admiring my smooth hair and frankly beautifully darkened eyes. Asked myself, what do you want? What do you want, look at your eyes, what is it you want?? I was only slightly lucid, there was no answer in that mirror.

I think I honestly like too many things. I am equally fired by cooking an immense 4 hour 2 course meal for 6, as I am eating mash out of a bowl with garlic mayo past midnight. I am as excited about Homework tomorrow night as I am about ballet on Thursday, as I am about dancing Saturday, as I am about The Approach Sunday. I am as edgy about writing a new sentence as I am about making a new mark, as thrilled by a new colour-fabric combo from the gods as visiting cookshops and dripping over the financier tins and Mason Cash batter jugs.

I have flitted a fair bit since I moved to London. I have been like an overexcited child, one moment studying writing and making things for Shona, doing duty to most excellent coffee and answering phones and bigger things at the School. Now I am working three days in order to 'write', whatever that may be, or whatever else it could be. I'm going out a lot. I'm having the fun of a 21 year old under the weight of (almost) twenty eight shoulders. I'm trying to live a dual existence, one which concurrently erases and undermines, and trusts and builds on my histories. In short, I'm all over the shop.

I'm too tired for resolutions or interesting words here, apologies, I just ran out of pen ink and needed to out. All I believe, is that a conversation in reality can eke out things I've not even realised I thought yet, so I am looking forward to meeting with him tomorrow, in whatever context. All I know, is that in light of a potential change, today wooshed by as quick as hell. Efficency came as a byproduct of lightness, an excitment that things might change, things need to change. Sadly, they do. Leave the party whilst it's still good, get your haircut when it suddenly looks ok, ish. You know change is whipped up in the wings and denying it is a very wrong thing.